"The fault of our policy," said the Duc de Grammont, "is that we have, in fact, no policy whatever. Instead of controlling events we are governed by them.

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Our policy and our duty," said the Prince, are perfectly simple and plain. They are to leave Rome instantly, and let the Italians settle the matter themselves. I do not say what is the settlement that I desire-perhaps you may guess.

"And the Austrians," said the Duc de Grammont; "will they permit that settlement? Twenty thousand Austrians would dispose of Garibaldi."

"The Austrians," said Bouet, "had an easy game as long as they held Tuscany. They could march through their own country on Rome and Naples. Now they cannot cross Tuscany without a war with Piedmont, which implies a war with France. They must go by sea. But they may be met at sea and beaten. The Piedmontese navy is larger and better than the Austrian one. Their army, with no retreat except by its ships, will be alarmed and demoralized."

"It is our business," said the Prince, "to prevent their going by sea or by Jand. We must march out of Rome, that is the first thing. We ought to do so to-morrow. Italy must be Italian. If it be not Italian it will be again Austrian, which France ought not to suffer, and will not suffer.'

And what is to become of the Pope?" said the Duc de Grammont.

،، Cela nous est égal," said the Prince. "He will be Bishop of Rome; we shall give him a good civil list, and he will pray for the King of Italy."

Not Pio Nono," said the Duke. If not Pio Nono," replied the Prince "somebody else. We shall change him for a Pio Decimo-for some pope qui sait vivre. For the last five hundred years Italy has been sacrificed to the papacy; it shall be so no longer. You, M. le Duc, know the state of the Papal Government better than anyone else; tell these gentlemen whether its badness is exaggerated."

"Certainly not exaggerated," he answered; it is underrated. No one who has not lived in Rome can imagine its atrocity or its corruption. It is not a government, it is a conspiracy of rogues and sbirri."

"Give us," said the Prince, some facts."

"I will tell you," said the Duke, one which occurred a short time ago. Some of the pontifical estates were to be let. A person whom I know, an excellent country gentleman, who never meddles in politics, wished to take them. So did a relation of Antonelli's. My acquaintance was therefore accused by the sbirri of having hissed them. He was thrust into one of the horrible papal dungeons and kept au secret, lest he should give any instructions to his homme d'affaires to bid for the lands. Antonelli's friend got the lease at half its value. I heard of it, went to the Pope, and got my acquaintance out, or he would probably be in prison now, and would remain there until his cell was wanted for somebody else.

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Last year some French soldiers accused a ferryman of demanding more than his fare. He was thrown into prison. Six months after his wife came to ask for my intercession. I went to the police. You have made me,' I said,

a sort of accomplice in a horrible oppression. I hear that on a trumpery accusation by one of our soldiers, a poor man has been six months in prison?' Of course he has,' answered the Director of Police; it is your own fault; you should have come or sent to me sooner. When a man is accused of having behaved ill to any of your soldiers, we keep him in prison until you ask for his release. It is a small proof of our gratitude to you.' But, bad as the Governments of Rome and Naples are, the people are still worse. After le bon Dieu had finished creating the bulk of the human species, he made Romans and Neapolitans out of the refuse and rubbish that were left.'

"The people," said the Prince, are what their Governments have made them. Centuries of ecclesiastical tyranny would have made us just as bad. And this is the Government which we brought back, which we have supported for ten years, and which we still support. It is our duty to God and man to withdraw that support instantly, whatever be the consequences. You say, M. le Duc, that we have no policy. What policy ought we to have?"

Une politique," answered the Duke,

"bien nette, bien arrêtée, bien ferme et regardant seulement nos propres intérêts. Pas une politique d'idées."

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'And what are our interests," said the Prince, "except that Italy be united and well governed?"

"Jamais peut-être," said the Duke, un ministre Français n'a été ainsi mis sur la sellette. Permit me to ask a question in my turn. Is it our interest to create a new great Power at our gates?" "France, said the Prince, "ought not to be deterred from following her instincts as the promoter of civilization by such fears, even if there were any foundation for them. But there is none. She is too great to fear any neighbor. am not sure that it would not be well to have six great Powers instead of five. They would better keep one another in order. One of these five, too, seems to be falling to pieces, and may want a

I

"The two dangers to Austria," said the Duke, "are are Hungary and Venetia. They are two weights, one on the north, the other on the south, which are pulling her asunder. I think that she will conciliate Hungary."

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"The young Emperor," said the Prince," will conciliate nobody. As to Venetia, that cannot be conciliated." No," said the Duke, "but it can be exchanged. I have reason to think that Austria is ready to resign it, if we will give her the Herzegovina and Moldavia and Wallachia."

"If she is not ready," replied the Prince," we must stimulate her; we must subject her to a gentle compulsion. It is all for her good, as she will find when she gets wiser. The kingdom of Italy must extend from the Alps to Cape Passaro.'

"I doubt," I said, "whether it will extend to Cape Passaro. The Sicilians will set up for themselves."

fused it at the Congress, of Vienna. But you diplomatists study nothing but history. As to what is actually passing, you know no more than the rest of us. When the Emperor wants to know what is going on, he does not send for Thouvenel, he sends for the Nord, or the Indépendance Belge, or the Times So does Queen Victoria. I never learned any thing from Walewski, except, perhaps, some little official secret of no real importance, but which he had better not have told."

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The Prince now rose from the armchair which he had so worthily filled. Ainsi finit," said Merimée to me as we went out, la séance Italienne. Prince parle bien, et dit admirablement tout ce qu'il ne doit pas dire."

Le

He greeted his guests, and was treated by them, with perfect familiarity. The only mark of his rank was the occasional use of Monseigneur. Much may have depended on the levelling influence of the cigar.

It was now about eleven. We have been in the smoking-room ever since a quarter to nine. I expected to find the ladies retired, but they still sat in a little circle round the Princess. No one joined that circle, and at length it broke up too. The Princess came to the tea-table where I was, and talked to me for ten minutes about Cavour, Azeglio, and Marochetti very agreeably. She is very like her father, but graceful and selfpossessed, simple, and grande dame. She is said to have been educated by Jesuits, to be a devout Papist, and to be made miserable by the Pope's degradation, and by the favor shown by her husband to the anti-Papal party.

Paris, April 14th, 1861.-Prince Napoleon sent a few days ago to ask me to visit him to-day.

I found several people in the antechamber. We were called in one by one, but no one's audience lasted more than three minutes, except mine, which was prolonged to five. He seemed anxious and absent, to use a French phase, préoccupe.

He told me that he had heard from an authority that could scarcely be mistaken that Lord Derby and Lord Palmerston had coalesced, that Derby was to be Premier and Palmerston Foreign Sec

retary, and that Gladstone had joined the Radicals.

"It is a most dangerous combination," he added, "and disturos me, who, as you know, am a steady friend to the English alliance. With such a ministry and this painful Syrian question, tout est possible.'

"Tout est possible," I answered, "except the story itself."

But I did not convince him. So he told me that sa femme hoped I would dine with them that day, and bowed me

out.

At dinner I found Lord Henry Lennox and several other persons, none of whom, except Michel Chevalier, I knew.

*

The dinner was stiff and silent. Between me and the Prince sat Madame de -. He talked to her much in a half whisper. I found afterward that it was about the letter. I am very sorry, he said," that the Emperor has suppressed it, as now I cannot answer it. At present ça regarde mon cousin. It is very well written, and not more unfair than was to have been expected. I think myself, however, hardly treated, for in my speech I carefully spared the Duc d'Aumale. I said nothing of the Duc de Bourbon.'

Immediately after dinner we went into the smoking-room, where the Prince took his usual armchair by the fire.

He was bitter and cynical.
We talked of the Pope.

"What I wish," said the Prince, "is to get rid of him altogether, and if all the bishops and priests follow him, so much the better."

"Yet," said somebody, "your Imperial Highness has lately been recommending a bishop, Monseigneur——”

"I told the Emperor," he answered, 66 'that was not quite so bad as the rest, so he was made bishop. But there is little to choose among them. I have seen priests of every kind. They are bad in Germany, they are bad in Italy, but they are nowhere so thoroughly bad as in France. Perhaps, however, I ought to except Ireland. When I was in Ireland last year the priests crowded round me, but they had no knowledge or com

*The allusion is to a pamphlet published by the Duc d'Aumale, in answer to a speech delivered by Prince Napoleon.-M. C. M. S.

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The real grievance is that the large majority and the poor majority of the Irish have to pay the priests of the rich minority. It is bad enough to have to pay a priest whom you believe."

He talked much of English politics; said that Lord Palmerston was a Tory, Gladstone a Radical, and a fool, and would not allow that any one had any political honesty except Lord Grey and Sir George Lewis.

The smoking party broke up very soon, and the Prince merely walked through the drawing-rooms and disappeared.

The Princess looked smiling and happy. Probably she was the only person present who had not heard of the Duc d'Aumale's letter.

Paris, March 13th, 1862.-I dined with Prince Napoleon. The ladies were Madame de -, the Princess, and her two ladies-in-waiting. Among the men the only ones that I knew were General Kalergi, the man who, after having in 1843 headed the great revolution and pointed his cannon against King Otho's palace, now represents him in Paris; Pietri; M. Petinet, formerly Prefect of Upper Savoy, now Director of the Imperial Printing Office; Colonel Claremont, the English military attaché; and several others whose names I could not ascertain, and whom, therefore I must designate by letters.

When we retired into the fumoir the Prince became the centre of an animated political discussion. As is generally the case in Paris, it turned more on general propositions than on particular facts. The Prince gave us a sort of essay on the French nation.

'The great fault," he said, of the French is qu'ils n'ont pas de caractère.

This shows itself in their dread of being in the minority. On every question the instinct of a Frenchman is to ascertain on which side is the majority, and to join it. It shows itself also in their want of elasticity. They have no backbone; a blow from the Government strikes them down, and they lie flat and torpid. It was the same three hundred years ago. There was at that time a strong Protestant feeling in France, but it could not stand persecution.

"Next to this their great fault is their hatred of superiors. The peasant, lying at the bottom of society, hates everyone who wears a coat, and still more every one who wears a cassock."

"The least bad," said the Prince. "The other day a storm was raised in the Senate because I was supposed to have said that Napoleon re-entered France in 1815 with the cry, à bas les prêtres! If I had said so it would have been the truth. The only country in Europe in which the priest is popular is England, and he is popular there because he is a gentleman, a man of the world, a père de famille, and above all because he is rich and is charitable. Our priests are poor; they eke out their incomes by exactions from the people; they are turned out of their seminaries ignorant of every thing except a scholastic divinity which, even if it be comprehensible, no one understands; they spring from the same class as the peasants over whom they claim absolute authority; they interfere in the ménage; they set the wife and the daughter against the husband and the father Every Government and every party that relies on their support is doomed.

"Does the peasant," I asked, “hate the prefect?"

Government as the enemy of his enemy, the bourgeois."

"What the ouvrier hates most is his patron. When I had to select a couple of hundred ouvriers to send them to London for the Exposition, I offered them forty thousand francs toward the expense. They accepted it from me, but they all said that they would not take a sou from their masters.

"Next to his patron the ouvrier hates the bourgeois.

"Louis Philippe and his bourgeois Chamber of Deputies were abominations to him. So were the Provisional Government and the Constituents' Assembly. All the ouvriers were behind the barricades against Louis Philippe in February, 1848, and against Cavaignac in the following June. He hates constitutional government, with its checks and counter-checks and hierarchy of power. His political affection is given only to what he supposes to be the revolutionary principle, the absence of an aristocracy, that is to say, of any intermediate between the Government and the mass of the people.

As for the bourgeois, he hates everybody, because he fears everybody. He hates and fears the people, he hates and fears what aristocracy we have left to us, he hates and fears the Government."

Why," I asked, "the Government ?""

"Because it taxes him," answered the Prince; "because it imposes free trade on him; because it makes war, subjects him to conscription, and interferes with trade.”

"Because," said X., "it emasculates his newspapers, interns him, or sends him to Cayenne if he talks too loud, and because it interferes with the course of justice if he is defrauded by one of its favorites."

"And the aristocracy?" I asked.

"from 1852 to 1861, and who knows how soon he may be reduced again to nothing?"

"Still," said W., "a great proprietor, such, for instance, as Falloux, has influence in the provinces."

"Certainly," said the Prince, "but how many of them are there? And how many of those have qualities which make them capable or even desirous of exercising an influence? As for titles, they are worth nothing; and birth, which has some little value in a few circles, is seldom authentic. Not one family in a hundred in the Faubourg has any right to the name which it bears.

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"The consequence," he 'continued, of all this is that there is no desire for liberty, or, indeed, possibility of it. For liberty cannot exist without intermediate bodies, centres of resistance between the throne and the people, breakwaters for the throne and bulwarks for the people.

"I bitterly deplore it; France is not liberal in government, in commerce, in any thing, in short, except in religion, and its religious tolerance arises from its disbelief. Even the schoolmaster does not affect to have any faith in the doctrines which he is obliged to pretend to teach."

"We must trust," said Pietri, "to the gradual operation of the press.

"I too," said the Prince," trust to the press; though it has done positively but little, it has done comparatively much during the last ten years. It has enabled the Emperor to give us an instalment of free trade and of free discussion.

"Illiberal as France still is, she is much less so than she was in 1852, much less so than she would have been if Louis Philippe had continued.

"But we shall not see fully the useful influence of the press till it is free. I say the useful influence, for the positive influence, the influence for evil, is probably greatest under a system of compression. In America, where there is perfect freedom, no one newspaper has much influence. In England, where the enormous expense of founding and keeping up a newspaper gives a monopoly to a few great capitalists, a few newspapers have considerable power, but not half the power which they have in France. The fiscal burdens, the cautionnement,

the liability to suppression, and the stamp, keep the number of papers lower even than it is in England, and the notoriety of the fact that they all publish, and indeed exist, only by the sufferance of the Government gives importance to their censures. Every thing that they say in opposition to the Government is taken as an admission. What I wish for is not so much the liberty of the press as its anarchy."

"By its anarchy," I said, "do you mean that there shall be no such thing as a délit de la presse ?"

"I mean, "he answered, that there

shall be no stamp, no cautionnement, no forced signature, no avertissement. At present the press is under the régime not of l'arbitraire, which is bad enough, but of le caprice, which is intolerable. I wish a journal with only two hundred abonnés to be able to live. I wish to have a hundred, or five hundred, such journals; their errors and their falsehoods would neutralize one another.

"But while every opposition journal calls in question the principle of the Government and of the dynasty, we must have some délits de la presse.

"In England you have practically abandoned prosecution because these questions are never raised. No newspaper in England writes against Christianity, or royalty, or property.

Still the system of avertissement, if it were not managed by a fool or a madman, has many advantages.' "I detest it," said Petinet. "To be tried, warned, and suppressed without being heard is intolerable.

"Still," said the Prince, “it is better to be suppressed than to be imprisoned. You would not find the tribunals much more liberal than M. de Persigny." "But a jury," I said, might be

so."

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The jury," said the Prince, "would consist of bourgeois. A jury, when it is frightened, is worse than even a judge, for it is not responsible even to public opinion, et les bourgeois sont en permanence de peur."

"I have had some experience," said Petinet, "for I have appeared before the tribunal seventeen times.

The conversation passed to the dissolution or expiration of the Corps Législatif.